you all ready let's do it hold on hold on wait wait okay i'm ready stretch out stretch

you out yeah hold on a potty break got they didn't dirt our musical intro yeah once you break

that seal it's all over yeah welcome Welcome back. It's episode 295 of Bourbon Pursuit, the podcast featuring news, reviews, and

interviews with people making the bourbon whiskey industry happen. I'm one of your host,

Kenny Coleman, and before we start today's podcast with another bourbon community roundtable, here's your weekly bourbon news update. So how much money is there in

liquor? Well, there's so much so that it's starting to line the pockets of politicians big time.

And it's mostly coming from distributors. A report produced using public records by Tom Wark,

he's the executive director of the National Association of Wine Retailers, and he shows that

wholesalers gave politicians $40.6 million in state-level campaigns over the last two elections.

That's more than double the amount donated by everybody else in the alcohol business combined.

And wholesalers wrote another $47.1 million in checks

to congressional and presidential candidates from 2017 to 2020. And Warck commented that

wholesalers give so much money because they have the most to protect. The state mandate that

people must buy from wholesalers is a huge financial and business advantage for the wholesalers.

And it's a quasi-monopoly. and doing anything to protect that is a sound business decision. And unfortunately, this is just one more reason why we won't see much change happening as much as the public really wants it to.

There is a small glimmer of hope, though. Illinois has some new legislation approved, and

this proposal will create a brewery and distiller's shipping license. Presently, brewers and

distillers cannot ship to Illinois customers. But to comply with the grand home requirements,

the law would then open up brewery and distillery-shipping markets to out-of-state brewers

and distiller's. There's also Senate Bill

532 and House Bill 3495 that aim to make cocktails to go permanent in Illinois. The Hawaii Senate

passed Senate Bill No. 65, which is a measure that allows direct-to-consumer shipping of distilled

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